This invention relates to harvester tools. The invention is particularly directed to manually operated harvester tools.
Typical harvested items are: grounded nuts and fruit; acorns, pine cones, leaves, grass clippings, etc.; orchard tree pruning residue; commercial landscaping debris; small arms range (e.g., picking up of spent shotgun Shell casings); lawn thatch and aerating residue; wood chips, bark, twigs; crabapples, cherries, fallen fruit, etc.; rocks and stones; and pet/animal droppings (less dust is produced during pick-up).
The commercial harvesting of nuts is typically accomplished by mechanically shaking the nut tree and then gathering up the grounded nuts using large mechanized harvesters. Some varieties of nuts, such as the American Chestnut, are almost exclusively harvested, after naturally falling to the ground, by the use of the gloved hand. Presently, there are no mechanical harvesters or manual implements capable of efficiently collecting chestnuts.
Manual rakes, such as the garden and leaf variety, have also been used but these require considerable effort to grip and operate for long periods of time. They are normally pulled over the ground surface and require considerable effort since the tines penetrate the grass cover down to the base of the grass where thatch and roots exert significant resistance (the tines are the slender, projecting parts of the rake). Furthermore, a quantity of uprooted grass and thatch ends is unnecessarily collected along with any fruit If the rakes are used for collecting leaves then they do have a tendency to clog up by impaling leaves or other debris and can also pierce the soft fleshy covering when nuts are raked Furthermore, these rakes can produce blisters on even a gloved hand and quickly tire the worker""s arms and back. The legs which are the strongest limbs of a human being are not effectively used for any purpose other than standing.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a harvester tool in which the above-mentioned disadvantages are reduced or substantially obviated.
According to the present invention there is provided a harvester push tool for harvesting items comprising a concave body portion with integral outwardly tangentially extending fingers at its lower end, in use, adapted to slide over ground when the harvester tool is caused to travel in a direction in which the fingers extend from said concave body portion whereby harvested items are collected,
said fingers being each of substantially rigid material and of such a width as not to bend unduly during said travel over said ground, and
said fingers being substantially flat on their lower surface to facilitate passage over said ground.